OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 September 1940, Page 7

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

THE SPIRIT OF ENGLAND (To the Editor.) Sir, —Probably the lectures of the late Professor Cramb are not much read at a time like this when our nation is at grips with a bloodthirsty and unscruplous foe. The Professor understood his Germany and England and if not carefully read might at times be taken for a pro-German (which of course he was not). His pronouncements for England therefore carry all the more weight. As they are as true today as when they were made and as they make more profitable topics of conversation than the vapourings of “Lord Haw Haw” and company, I may perhaps be permitted to quote some of them: “Freedom a French thinker once defined as the power to exercise the will in the pursuit of its highest ends without fear. For this alone gives to the mind that tranquillity, that ‘security’ in the strict sense of the word — immunity from cares—necessary to free operations of the mind. And it is this tranquillity, this security, that is now above all things necessary to England. But it is just this tranquillity, this securing, which she cannot find. For whilst England may pray for peace in order to shape out her problems in politics, there still beyond the North Sea is the Stern Watcher, unsleeping, unresting, pursuing her own goal undeviatingly, unfalteringly weighing every action of England, waiting for every sign of England’s weakness. It is here that Germany's will to power comes into tragic conflict with England’s will to peace. Here is the. element of discord—it is not in England herself. What will be the 'issue?" The next quotation is from the introduction to Cramb’s book and was written by a former United States Ambassador to Great Britain (Mr Walter Page) when the last war was a few months old: “The actual conflict has gone far enough, one should think, to disabuse Germany of some of its ideas about England. Instead of her Empire being ready to fall to pieces, by the dropping off of her colonies, armies are marching to her aid from all her Dominions beyond the seas, apparently ready to fight for her life with as ardent patriotism as the regular British soldier, and instead of any flnehing or holding back on the part of the individual Englishman, they are all to a man rushing to the support of the colours or already engaged in the terrible conflict on the Aisne and the Marne with a courage worthy of the field of Agincourt." And now, well over a quarter of a century later, they are doing the same thing. Concerning this indomitable British spirit a more lengthy extract is enclosed herewith. Thanking you, Sir, I am, etc.. BRITISH NEW ZEALANDER. The extract mentioned reads: . . . "If I were asked how one could describe the general aim of British Imperialism during the last two centuries and a half, I should answer in the spirit of Dionysins: To give all men within its bounds an English mind; to give all who come within its sway the power to look at the things of life, at the past at the future, from the standpoint of an Englishman: to diffuse within its bounds that high tolerance in religion which has marked this Empire from its foundation: that reverence yet'

boldness before the mysteriousness of life and death, characteristic of our great poets and our great thinkers; that love of free institutions, that pursuit of an ever-higher justice and a larger freedom which, rightly or wrongly, we associate with the temper and character of our race wherever it is dominant and secure. “That is the conception of Empire and of England which persists through the changing fortunes of parties and the rise and fall of Cabinets. It outlives the generations. Like an imI mortal energy it links age to age. This undying spirit is the true England, the true Britain, for which men strive and suffer in every zone and in every era, which silently controls their actions and shapes their character like an inward fate—‘England.’ It is this which gives hope in hopeless times, imparting its immortal vigour to the statesman in his Cabinet and to the soldier in the field . . . this mysterious, deathless, onward-striving force, call it God, call it destiny—but name it England. For England it is. . . . Who speaks of England’s greatness speaks of this. Her renown, her glory, it is this, undying, imperishable, in the strictest sense of that word. For if, in some cataclysm of nature, these islands and all they embrace were overwhelmed and sunk in sea oblivion. if tomorrows sun rose upon an Englandless world, still this spirit and this purpose in other lands would fare on untouched amid the wreck.”